In our Journalism class we have been following multiple news sources (WAVE, WHAS, WLKY, WDRB, and The Courier-Journal) for over four weeks to see how many/what kind of stories they produce on a daily basis.
Most of these sources met at least some of the Nine Principles of Journalism and Seven Yardsticks of Journalism, but the number of stories that had little or no local relevance was a lot higher than it should have been.
One of the contributing factors to that lack of local relevance was the influx of Ebola stories in the news. With every day of news analysis, it was rare to not find at least one story that involved the new, deadly disease.
In the month of October alone (only on the days that we studied these news sources), the number of headlines and online headlines (not including additional stories) that involved Ebola was ten.The number of additional stories from the news sources about Ebola was also abundant; on October 16th, 2014 The Courier-Journal (a local, Louisville newspaper) had a total of nine health stories, all of which were on a national or international level! This was the highest number of health stories out of all the news sources and out of all the days that were spent studying them.
In fact, the number of Ebola stories every day is almost outrageous and completely unnecessary; after all, exactly how many people have been infected, let alone died in the United States from Ebola? According to the CDC, there have only been four cases of Ebola in the United States, with only one case resulting in death. With these known statistics, the number of stories that are being produced about Ebola doesn't match up with the real level of worry United States citizens should be feeling. One can even assume that these news sources are beefing up the threat of Ebola and using that as a way to produce easy and lazy stories, because by doing so they can make the readers believe there is an immediate threat, which ultimately gives these stories a lot of viewers because people always want to read about something that can potentially hurt, threaten, or affect them in any way. This also leads to more production of these unnecessary Ebola stories, because as long as the number of viewers remains consistent, the news sources will continue to make them. In reality, at this given time, there really isn't an immediate threat, especially not to the areas in which these specific local news stations cover, and therefore they are not meeting the journalistic yardstick of local relevance and making the whole ordeal on Ebola seem more serious than it actually is.
Link to Courier-Journal Ebola Headline Story on 10-10-14
Monday, November 3, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Response to Caroline B's Class Discussion titled "{Whostory?}"
Let me just start off by saying I absolutely love her title. It is so creative and goes a long well with the theme and the message she is talking about in her blog post.
I also want to say that I agree with everything she said; it does seem kind of crazy that in school we are only being taught almost half of the truth when it comes to some things, like in history. For example, I always believed that Gutenberg had invented the printing press, and when I found out that he actually didn't and only really helped make an advanced version, I felt like I had been cheated. Like Caroline said, the school system just decided it would put in the education curriculum what it viewed as the most relevant, but that doesn't mean that it's the truth. I also agree with what she said about how you can't particularly do this at all as a journalist because when you are writing a news story you can't just tell half of the truth; everything has to be 100% true and factual and have reliable sources that provides evidence. In journalism we can't have those mysteries that exist in history about who created what, who said what, and so on. I am also in agreement with what she said about how some countries have a negative reputation with them when in reality (most of the time) the people to blame and the people who gave the country their bad reputation are people who are in power; it's not always the citizens' fault.
Go check out Caroline's awesome blog post by clicking on this link: http://letsbecriticalok.blogspot.com/2014/09/whostory.html
Binary Models
Binary Models: Class Discussion Response #4
There are four different binary models-
1. Hot-Cool- The amount of attention the mass communication requires.
Hot- Requires audience's full attention. In order to fully understand it, you have to completely focus on it.
Examples: Print Books, Audio Books
Cold- Does NOT require full attention.
Examples: Music, Television, Movies; Can have any of these three things going on in the background and to understand it you don't have pay full attention; Can multi-task.
2. Elitist-Populist
Elitist- Concerned with it's message; it's message is it's number one priority, no matter it's audience size.
Examples: Slashdot, The Nation, PBS
Populist- Concerned about it's popularity; will post/talk about anything that it thinks will expand it's audience and make it more popular.
Examples: Buzzfeed, People, ABC
3. Content-Distribution
Content- Only produces it's own content; makes it's content.
Examples: Sony, Warner Bros, HBO
Distribution- Distributes and produces content to people and audiences.
Examples: iTunes, Amazon, Netflix
4. Information-Entertainment
Information- Stories are more information based; to inform.
Entertainment- Stories are meant to be entertaining to read; to entertain.
There is an "in between" version of this binary model called "Infotainment" in which people try to make the entertaining informational, but it always leans more towards the "entertaining" side.
Example: ABC News
I found this lecture to be the most interesting out of all of the lectures we've had because I liked learning about the contrasting forms of communication and I felt like I could relate some every day activities to some of these binary models. For example, I always knew that I could never multi-task while reading a book and that it required my full attention, but I never knew that it can be described as a model that is used in communication (the hot medium from the Hot-Cool binary model). I think it's pretty cool how things that you never really think twice about on a daily basis can have a more complex meaning to them and belong to models that you might have never guessed they belonged to.
Monopolies and Cartel
Monopolies and Cartel: Class Discussion Response #3
There are two types of monopolies:
1. Horizontal Monopoly- One company owns every business in one stage in a production process.
Example- (Movie production process) One company owns every distributing business (such as Amazon).
This type of monopoly has NO competition in it's area of a production process.
It is threatening in which can change whatever it wants to change and can rid of freedom of expression because it has total control.
*THIS TYPE OF MONOPOLY IS ILLEGAL*
2. Vertical Monopoly- One company owns one of every stage in a production process.
Example- (Movie production process) One company owns one business that makes the movie, one business that processes the movies, one business that distributes the movies, and one business that gives the people/public access to the movies.
This monopoly can still have competition with other companies and businesses.
*THIS TYPE OF MONOPOLY IS LEGAL*
Cartel- When companies work together to raise prices above the market price to make/force everyone to pay the same, above-market, high price.
Example- All the gas stations in a city decide to all raise their gas prices to $3.99 to get more money even though the market price is only $3.55, and in every other city the price is below or the same value as the market price.
*THIS IS ILLEGAL*
I'm going to be honest; before we had this discussion I wasn't entirely sure I knew what a monopoly was, and I definitely wasn't aware that there were different types of monopolies. In fact, the only place I'd really heard about a monopoly was from the board game "Monopoly". I also didn't know what cartel was. But now that I do know, I definitely can see the connection. Just like in the board game, when someone has total control with a monopoly it can be a disaster for everyone else (in the board game, harmful to the other players: in real life, harmful to other companies) and can lead to total obliteration (in the board game, obliterating by losing the game: in real life, obliterating by harming the economy or causing other businesses to go bankrupt).
In my opinion, although monopolies can help a certain company make more money, I think they are ultimately harmful and can hurt our economy more than help.
Magazines
Magazines: Class Discussion Response #2
- Magazines were invented by Benjamin Franklin, who made the first magazine, General Magazine.
- Magazines were the 1st national medium and national publications with national advertising, a national audience, and the creation of a national identity.
- National advertising was great for business.
- People became famous from their publications in magazines.
- Magazines are cheaper than books.
- They create something for everyone to talk about; rich, middle-class, and some poor alike read magazines.
- Magazines spread literacy all across the world as more and more people began to read them.
- Magazines were the first to do long-form, investigative journalism.
- They were the first to have personality profiles.
- First to have photojournalism.
All these points above and all the effects that have come from magazines are some that I would have never thought about before we had this lesson. I had always thought of magazines as a form of entertainment, but I learned from this lesson that at one time magazines focused more on elitist things instead of populist things. The fact that magazines have helped/benefited and continue to do so for our country in so many ways, from spreading literacy to broadening the field of journalism, simply amazes me. In fact, I didn't even know that magazines were beneficial until we had this lesson.
The Types and Process of Communication
Class Discussion Response #1
- Mass Communication- sharing ideas with a mass audience (more than one person) but not being able to get instant, immediate feedback.
- Group Communication- sharing ideas with a mass audience or group of people; one person talking to a bunch of people. Can get immediate feedback from audience; works as a 2-way form of communication.
- Individual Communication- interactive; the sharing of ideas between two people.
Process-
- Stimulus- starting point; "my idea"
- Encoding- taking an idea and putting it in a symbolic form to where people can understand it. E.x. typing a recipe in a word document.
- Transmission- sharing the idea with the public/making it available for people to see. E.x. uploading the recipe to a blog.
- Decoding- when the public encounters the idea/communication. E.x. reading the recipe on the blog using your phone.
- Internalization- remembering the idea; "your idea"
Impediments- external
- Semantic Noise- A problem/interference with encoding. E.x. Word Document crashes in the middle of typing a book and all content is erased.
- Channel Noise- Bad transmission. E.x. A book gets shipped to the wrong house.
- Environmental Noise- A problem with decoding; something around you is interfering with your ability to decode an idea. E.x. You can't focus on decoding a book because your mom is vacuuming and it is distracting you.
Filters-
- Physical- Can prevent people from internalizing an idea; usually happens because there are physical features preventing the internalization.
- Psychological- Prevention from thoughts.
- Informational- Learning barriers. E.x. not knowing a language.
Response to Cicada Hoyt's Article Critique
As I was reading through Cicada Hoyt's media critique, I couldn't help but shake my head in agreement as I read line after line of her work. All of her main points excellently portrayed how the article she decided to critique violated the Nine Principles and Seven Yardsticks of Journalism.
Her explanations were very analytic and helped me understand why certain aspects of the article violated the Nine Principles and Seven Yardsticks; for example, instead of just saying something as vague as "the article violates the explanation yardstick", she actually explained how there was a violation. She did this by using evidence that she discovered and collected, such as saying-
"... the reporter only said what happened and not why it happened. For example, he could've explained about what had happened with the shooting and after the shooting... Perhaps if the reporters reported the facts they wouldn't have been so quick to judge..."
This short breakdown of what she explained was used to support the idea that the article was violating the Explanation Yardstick, and overall, this allowed for me to better understand her critique and for me to understand her views on the topic.
Another thing that I was impressed with was the use of photos as a visual aid to show violations. Cicada used a picture of police aiming weapons at a man who had his arms in surrender as a way to show the violation of the 5th Principle (Watchdog), which supported her explanation of how instead of keeping an eye on the people with power (in this case, the police) the article was directed to keeping the attention/keeping an eye on the citizens of Ferguson (in this case, the people who don't necessarily have power).
I also think it's pretty great that she took on the daunting task of finding violations in an article with a very controversial, commonly talked about (at the time) topic.
I did notice one little error; there was a lot of usage of first person words like "I" and a few opinions here in there in the article, which shouldn't really be used in media critiques (it should be in 3rd person), but nonetheless, nothing can distract from the fact that her critique was very factual, relevant, understandable, and overall superb.
Go check out her media critique by clicking on the following link: http://cadylandia.blogspot.com/2014/09/article-critique-ferguson-shooting.html
Picture: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8379/8672563295_9c270cbc79_b.jpg
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